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Good young friends just baptised their first child… an auspicious occasion! We were lucky to be part of it all in Carbondale PA. We took a wrong turn on the notoriously badly-signed PA roads… we were a half-hour late, but right-on-time… Russians are STILL Russians!

I have optimism towards our future (what I saw that day contributed to that impression). What gives me hope is that we now have ROCOR priests who’ve graduated from St T’s… something unthinkable in the nasty “Church War” era (I’m glad that madness is over). I think that we’re on the verge of something great. May God grant me to see its fruition. I think that many of us in “Russian Orthodoxy” want unity… the days of the OCA and ROCOR (in the old sense of those terms) seem to be drawing to a close…